Tata Group has emerged as most trusted conglomerate in the recent poll conducted by Equitymaster, an independent equity research firm.
The Tata Group has garnered 66 per cent of the total votes, which is more than double the number of votes (32 per cent), it had received in the last such poll conducted in 2013.
Interestingly, the 153-year-old AV Birla Group and Mukesh Ambani Group occupied second and third place with meagre vote of 5 per cent and 4.7 per cent of the votes, respectively.
A total of 5,274 people participated to vote on 17 large corporates based on their trustworthiness.
In fact, except for Tata Group none of the other 16 groups have been able to win the trust of over 5 per cent of the total number of participants, although many of these groups have moved up a few ranks from Equitymaster’s last poll conducted in 2013.
The Birla Group, Godrej, and TVS have moved up two ranks, the Mukesh Ambani Group jumped six ranks while the Rahul Bajaj group, which came in fourth place, moved up nine ranks from the last poll.
Another significant change in this year’s poll results was that only 2 per cent investors voted for ‘None of the Above’ category as opposed to 4 per cent in 2013.
The group that received the least number of votes (0.8 per cent) is the RPG (Ram Prasad Goenka) group, the company that owns Ceat Tyres.
The poll reveals that there is a huge gap between the winner and the rest of the corporate groups, said Equitymaster in a statement on Wednesday.
Rahul Shah, co-head of Research, Equitymaster said an increasing portion of a firm's value resides in intangibles such as goodwill and reputation and when it comes to making intangibles tangible, nothing is more important than trust.
“The attribute flows from a company's leadership through the organisation to its external stakeholders which ultimately increases profitability over the long-term. However, if not paid attention to, a lack of trust can have the opposite effect.”